On the Road Again!

And this time, westbound. I arrived in Seattle on Monday for my summer internship with Starbucks. I am staying at the Mediterranean Inn, which is about a 35 minute commute from Starbucks corporate headquarters, or SSC for Seattle Support Center. I have a queen size bed, reading chair desk w/desk chair, flat screen tv w/dvd player, and a kitchenette and a bathroom.

My favorite part is that there's a patio on the roof! It was a beautiful day today, so after work I went up and read a book out there. Here are some pics of the view:

Seattle is really beautiful, and so far, I absolutely love it here. I'll write more about what I'm doing at Starbucks another time.

-Em

Interlaken, Switzerland

We left Berlin around 3:30 pm headed towards Interlaken, our final destination. The German countryside and  Swiss Alps were incredible, but it was a really long trip. We got very close to Interlaken around 5am and just parked and slept in the car. We didn't realize we were only about 5 miles away. Anyways this is the parking lot we woke up in:

So life could be worse. When we woke up, we drove to McDonald's to use the free wi-fi, and then went to the Happy Inn, which is the place we had booked for the previous night. We booked a room for that night, took a shower, got some groceries for lunch, and went outside and found a big patch of grass to lay down on until the room was ready. Then we slept from 3 to 6 and explored the city and found a really cool restaurant to eat at that was attached to the Best Western hotel. We split a meat fondue - fondues are apparently really popular in Switzerland.

We had a plate of chicken, pork, and steak, with 6 mystery sauces. Most of them were spicy, which Brian was excited about, but I at least liked one of them a lot, and everything was good without sauce anyways. One of the waiters even played a little song! It's a really long clip, you don't have to watch the whole thing -

He has clearly been practicing for the yodeling competition coming up in the middle of June. They were advertising that pretty heavily throughout the town. When we got back, there was a live Latino band playing downstairs at the bar in our hostel! They were really good actually. It seemed like just about the entire village was there. Here's a little clip:

The next day we took a funicular to the Harder Kulm restaurant. The food was pretty awful in my opinion, but the experience was awesome. I ordered melted cheese on bread, ham, and a fried egg. This is what I got:

Wet bread, 2 slices of ham, about 3 pounds of cheese, and a fried egg. Stacked up in that order. The egg was good, but I didn't like the cheese, which had seeped its way into everything else. But here are some pictures that I took while we were up there:

It was so amazing. We were able to see all those mountains from the town below where we were staying, but to get a bird's eye view was incredible. We also went up to Grindelwald before making our way back to Spain, which was really pretty. I didn't take any pictures though.

We slept for a few hours in a parking lot somewhere in France last night because both of us were too tired to drive safely. We got back on the road again around 6:30 am to drop off our stuff, clean the car, and return it around 10. The end. I slept a lot today. This trip was definitely one of the best things I've ever experienced. I'll tell you all more about it in person when I get home in a week and a half!

Amsterdam & Berlin

We were in Amsterdam for about a day and a half. We got in around 3:00 am, got changed by the car, and went to downtown to see the nightlife. There weren't any hostels available, so we were planning on partying through the night and checking in to our hostel as early as possible. Luckily though, we met some people from Scotland and they had an extra bed, so I got the bed and Brian slept on the floor. Brian now has herpes in his eye. Saturday was fun - I rented a bike and rode around and explored the whole city.

The Original Heineken Brewery

The National Monument

The Royal Palace

Cows grazing on a ceiling

Central Station

Sign congratulating the soccer team's win

The bike I rented

Famous "I amsterdam" sculpture

 A field outside our hostel after the Ajax game

One of the many, many rivers

There was an Ajax game during the day, and the celebrations turned into a riot and by 8pm the police had blocked off all of downtown. All the bridges were blocked by mounted police, a giant wall, and then more police. I had to bike around for over an hour to get back to the hostel.

Now I am sitting in my hostel in Germany. It is really cool, really fun, and dirt cheap. It's great. We got in this morning around 2:30am, crashed, and then I went on a free tour that lasted about 4 hours while Brian was at the hospital for his eye. Later tonight we are going to find out what a beer garden is, and then maybe go to a club or something. Tomorrow I'm going to go back to some of the places I saw on my tour today because we weren't at each place for long enough to really appreciate it.

Here are some pictures I took on the tour:

The Old Museum

Once world's largest piece of granite, sculpted into a bowl, termed the 8th wonder of the world, and they dropped it.

The armory. Yes, it is pink.

Inspired by The Pieta - Mary holding Jesus. Above is an opening, so when it rains the statue gets wet and it looks like she's crying. Below the statue is the grave of an unnamed soldier and a Jew killed in WWII. 

The university

Symbol of communism built by the Soviets - but when the sun hits the sphere it forms a cross. Some call it "The Pope's Revenge"

The university

Plaza in front of the university where the book-burning took place

Memorial built to remember the book burning - you can't see it too well in the picture, but it's a clear window and beneath it you can see enough empty bookshelves to house all the books burnt that day. 

Same memorial

A sign from Checkpoint Charlie

line where the Berlin Wall used to be

A remaining piece of the wall

Previously Hitler's office

Site where Hitler committed suicide

Memorial built to honor the Jews killed in the war

Brandenburg Gate

That's all I've got for now - It's getting late. I'll check in again in the next few days! Love always.